UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



Early man saw and felt and heard spirits on all sides 

 of him — in fire, in water, in air; but he controlled 

 and used these things only so far as he was practi- 

 cally scientific. To catch the wind in his sails he had 

 to put himself in right physical relation to it. If he 

 stayed the ravages of flood or fire, Ye was compelled 

 to cease to propitiate these powers as offended dei- 

 ties, and fight them with non-human forces, as he 

 does to-day. And the man of to-day may have any 

 number of superstitions about his relations to the 

 things around him, and about theirs to him, but he 

 is successful in dealing with them only when he 

 forgets his superstitions and approaches things on 

 rational grounds. 



Our fathers who held that every event of their 

 lives was fixed and unalterable, according to the 

 decrees of an omnipotent being, could not have sur- 

 vived had their daily conduct been in harmony with 

 their beliefs. But when ill, they sent for the doctor; 

 if the house got afire, they tried to put the fire out; 

 if crops failed, they improved their husbandry. 

 They slowly learned that better sanitation lessened 

 the death-rate; that temperate habits prolonged 

 life; that signs and wonders in the heavens and in 

 the earth had no human significance; that wars 

 abated as men grew more just and reasonable. We 

 come to grief the moment that we forget that Na- 

 ture is neither for nor against us. We can master her 

 forces only when we see them as they are in and of 



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